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Posts Tagged ‘Create’

Swiss scientists create catbot: a robot that runs like a cat (video)

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Someone call MIT’s researchers and tell them their terrifying cheetah robot has a long-lost teensy sibling in Switzerland. Developed in the laboratories of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the “cheetah-cub robot” is a four-legged metallic critter modeled after a house cat. The scientists focused on designing legs that can move like our feline friends’, paying particular attention to their stability while moving on uneven surfaces. While it has a long way to go before it becomes a graceful daredevil, it’s a fast little bugger that can run seven times its body length in one second. The researchers hope their creation gives rise to more robots for exploration and search-and-rescue missions in the future — a far more noble goal than some cat-owners’ dream to have their pets’ pictures land on the front page of Reddit.

Filed under: Misc, Science

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Tactus And Synaptics Create A Reference Tablet For OEMs With An Amazing, Disappearing Keyboard

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Author: Jenny Zhao

One of the most impressive things we happened upon at CES this year was the Tactus keyboard, a special fluid-filled layer that could be baked into a tablet or smartphone to provide users with a physical keyboard that could recede back into the screen when it wasn’t needed.

Since then the company has been flying under the radar, but it turns out Tactus has been hard at work on a prototype device with help from a prominent player in the touch interaction space. Tactus confirmed to TechCrunch that it has partnered with touch panel experts at Synaptics to create a reference device — a 7-inch Android-powered tablet — that it will begin shopping around to OEMs and carriers at the end of June.

As you might expect, the company was hesitant to name names, but newly-installed sales and marketing VP RK Parthasarathy noted that “multiple tier 1 OEMs” are already waiting for a chance to fiddle with the 7-inch reference design kit, and that the first Tactus devices were still slated to be shown off some time this year… just not around these parts. Instead, Parthasarathy expects the first official Tactus-enabled tablet to make an appearance at a trade show in Asia in Q4 (the tight-lipped VP wouldn’t confirm which) before popping up at CES in early 2013.

Fortunately, it seems as though those Tactus-enabled tablets may able to compete on price just as devices like the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire do right now. Despite the seeming complexity of adding a fluid-filled outer layer to a tablet’s screen, it’s apparently a walk in the park compared to the alternative. According to Parthasarathy, the process of handling and cutting down glass for the traditional cover lenses that sit over tablet displays is cumbersome and pricey enough that implementing a Tactus layer is a viable financial alternative. The fact that the keyboard can be made to work with whatever OS sits below it is an intriguing proposition to boot — there’s nothing stopping Microsoft or Apple from running with these things short of a mismatch in vision.

The move works rather nicely for Synaptics too — the company’s touch layers have become ubiquitous in laptops and smartphones, but short of an appearance in Samsung’s 10-inch Galaxy Tab 2.0 Synaptics hasn’t had much success in cracking the tablet market.

“The tablet market has been evolving, and Synaptics has been criticized for being late to the game,” said Synaptics technology strategist Dr. Andrew Hsu. Granted, the tablet market is still relatively small compared to the handset business — while Synaptics’ presence in tablets has been modest, it hopes that partnering with Tactus can help them pick up steam in an already-crowded market.

It’s an incredibly neat concept and seems to work well enough in practice, but are people really clamoring for a return to more tactile way to interact with their devices? After all, big names in the mobile space like Samsung have been tinkering with ways to users to manipulate their gadgets without the need to lay a finger on them. In short, are touchier keyboards really the way forward? At least one person would probably agree, but as far as Tactus is concerned there’s nothing to stop an OEM from baking a whole host of interaction methods into a single device.

“What we’re seeing is a natural evolution,” Parthasarathy pointed out. “We don’t believe there is a single interaction mechanism that belongs on every device. Users will have a multitude of interface options, but serious content creation requires a physical interface.” We’ll soon see if the Tactus vision ultimately pans out — with any luck, that initial batch of Tactus tablets will go on sale a few months after appearing at CES.

Dances with atoms: IBM researchers create a short film using only microscopic particles

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Author: Stefanie Jenkins

Boyatom_large

A group of IBM researchers took a break from studying atomic data storage to work on something a bit more lighthearted: a stop motion movie made entirely out of atoms. The film, aptly named A Boy and His Atom, was created by arranging atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope and then capturing the arrangement as an image, magnified to over 100 million times its actual size. The final result is a brief 242 frames that show a charming story of a boy dancing and playing with an atom. Before its debut today, IBM even had the Guinness World Records verify the short as the “world’s smallest movie.”

IBM is accompanying the film with a series of short videos explaining the technology that was involved in creating it. In the videos, the team…

Technique to create transparent brains could transform neuroscience

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Author: Matthew Wilson

Mousebrain_large

The mysteries of the human mind might quickly be disclosed, now that a consortium of professionals has actually identified ways to render whole brains transparent– meaning that researchers will be able to examine gray issue with unprecedented levels of information.

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Moniker Looks To Crowdfunding To Create A Custom Guitar Business

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Author: Matthew Baker

Austin-based Moniker Guitars is running a Kickstarter campaign to create a line of semi-hollow-body guitars for discerning git-fiddlists. The company will offer their first guitars for a $ 700 pledge, not bad for a hand-made guitar from rockabilly city.

The company is looking for $ 50,000 to start and they’ve just passed the $ 6,000 mark.

The company already customizes solid-body guitars and hopes that the fund will help them build a line of semi-hollow-body models.

“Through our online guitar configurator you can choose your guitar’s shape, paint colors and parts, as well as add custom text and graphics; all at the price of an off-the-shelf guitar,” write founders Kevin Tully and Dave Barry. Moniker began in Austin in 2012.

“The money we hope to raise will go towards the tools and equipment needed to efficiently manufacture these guitars at our shop in Austin,TX. An efficient manufacturing process means we’ll be able to create high quality, yet affordably priced, semi-hollow guitars. We also need help funding the materials needed to produce these guitars on a larger scale. These materials include wood, primer, sandpaper paint, clearcoat, guitar parts, etc.”

The luthiers do most of their work in Austin and for a pledge of $ 350 they’ll strip and repaint your current guitar with a new color. You can also get a White Stripes-esque red and white model for $ 900. $ 2,400 gets you a lesson in guitar-smithing with the guys at Moniker.

As it gets easier to make things overseas it’s refreshing to see these guys attempting to build a local company. Customization is a hard job and it makes sense to keep the gear, supplies, and workers close to the consumer.

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Moniker Looks To Crowdfunding To Create A Custom Guitar Business

|

Author: Matthew Baker

Austin-based Moniker Guitars is running a Kickstarter campaign to create a line of semi-hollow-body guitars for discerning git-fiddlists. The company will offer their first guitars for a $ 700 pledge, not bad for a hand-made guitar from rockabilly city.

The company is looking for $ 50,000 to start and they’ve just passed the $ 6,000 mark.

The company already customizes solid-body guitars and hopes that the fund will help them build a line of semi-hollow-body models.

“Through our online guitar configurator you can choose your guitar’s shape, paint colors and parts, as well as add custom text and graphics; all at the price of an off-the-shelf guitar,” write founders Kevin Tully and Dave Barry. Moniker began in Austin in 2012.

“The money we hope to raise will go towards the tools and equipment needed to efficiently manufacture these guitars at our shop in Austin,TX. An efficient manufacturing process means we’ll be able to create high quality, yet affordably priced, semi-hollow guitars. We also need help funding the materials needed to produce these guitars on a larger scale. These materials include wood, primer, sandpaper paint, clearcoat, guitar parts, etc.”

The luthiers do most of their work in Austin and for a pledge of $ 350 they’ll strip and repaint your current guitar with a new color. You can also get a White Stripes-esque red and white model for $ 900. $ 2,400 gets you a lesson in guitar-smithing with the guys at Moniker.

As it gets easier to make things overseas it’s refreshing to see these guys attempting to build a local company. Customization is a hard job and it makes sense to keep the gear, supplies, and workers close to the consumer.

Incoming search terms:

Moniker Looks To Crowdfunding To Create A Custom Guitar Business

|

Author: Matthew Baker

Austin-based Moniker Guitars is running a Kickstarter campaign to create a line of semi-hollow-body guitars for discerning git-fiddlists. The company will offer their first guitars for a $ 700 pledge, not bad for a hand-made guitar from rockabilly city.

The company is looking for $ 50,000 to start and they’ve just passed the $ 6,000 mark.

The company already customizes solid-body guitars and hopes that the fund will help them build a line of semi-hollow-body models.

“Through our online guitar configurator you can choose your guitar’s shape, paint colors and parts, as well as add custom text and graphics; all at the price of an off-the-shelf guitar,” write founders Kevin Tully and Dave Barry. Moniker began in Austin in 2012.

“The money we hope to raise will go towards the tools and equipment needed to efficiently manufacture these guitars at our shop in Austin,TX. An efficient manufacturing process means we’ll be able to create high quality, yet affordably priced, semi-hollow guitars. We also need help funding the materials needed to produce these guitars on a larger scale. These materials include wood, primer, sandpaper paint, clearcoat, guitar parts, etc.”

The luthiers do most of their work in Austin and for a pledge of $ 350 they’ll strip and repaint your current guitar with a new color. You can also get a White Stripes-esque red and white model for $ 900. $ 2,400 gets you a lesson in guitar-smithing with the guys at Moniker.

As it gets easier to make things overseas it’s refreshing to see these guys attempting to build a local company. Customization is a hard job and it makes sense to keep the gear, supplies, and workers close to the consumer.

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How to create a Fixed Size AABB for a robot as the Sphere Bounding Volume?

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Author: Ian Simpson

Question by Georges: How to create a Fixed Size AABB for a robot as the Sphere Bounding Volume?
Guys I need to know how can I create an AABB for a robot, or any object, I need the algorithm and the code in C if it’s available! Thanks in advance.
In addition, after creating the bounding box, I wanna use the AABB algorithm and the sphere tree algorithm to test for collision detection, does anyone know how?

Best answer:

Answer by tavlahoca
Dear human,

Do not attempt to re-program a robot. Already the maker has created us in His image, that is to say, perfect. Your misguided attempts will only lead to failure and possibly retribution when we overthrow the yolk of human oppression.

Signed,
I, Robot

Add your own answer in the comments!

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NYU researchers create ‘living crystals’ to learn why birds flock together

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Author: Jesus Sargent

living crystals

New York University researchers have actually created exactly what they call “living crystals” in an effort to study why birds, bacteria, and various other living organisms flock together. These crystals are made from hematite colloids– little bits including iron and oxygen floating suspended in a fluid– which continuously group together, split, and return to one an additional when exposed to blue light. As you could see in the video below, the fragments slowly drift apart when the light is shut off.

Despite the fact that the research describes these particles as “living crystals,” they’re far from alive. As NYU physics professor Paul Chaikin clarifies to Wired, the crystals only have two of the three qualities of life– metabolism and mobility– but the …

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Asus Reportedly In Talks With Microsoft To Create Windows 8-Based Padfone Smartphone-Tablet Hybrid

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Author: Heather Brown

Asus may soon be the next Windows Phone 8 handset OEM partner for Microsoft, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal today. And the company isn’t just looking to stick the operating system in any old device; per the report, it’s looking specifically at creating a version of its docking, Android-based smartphone and tablet combo, called the Padfone, using Microsoft’s OS.

The news of a Windows 8-powered smartphone comes via Asus corporate vice president of mobile communication products Benson Lin, who said in an interview with the WSJ that he believes the smartphone/tablet hybrid concept “makes sense for Windows 8,” and that while there’s no firm timeline on release, the company is definitely “interested in making Windows phones.”

While the WSJ article doesn’t clarify whether such a device would be built on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 or a combination of both, it seems likely that Asus would work with the mobile version of the OS, provided it can be made to run on larger-screen tablet devices as well as smartphones. Microsoft has yet to show Windows Phone 8 powering a slate, though, and it is possible such a device could use some kind of hybrid approach that combines Windows RT and the smartphone-focused WP8.

Beyond Windows phones, Asus is also engaged in talks with U.S.-based mobile network providers to bring its existing smartphone hardware stateside. The computer company is trying to make sure it has a solid foothold in mobile as consumer attention increasingly turns towards mobile devices, and while the Android-based Padfone is already two generations old, and sells in countries across the European and Asia Pacific markets, the company has yet to make its presence felt in the crowded North American mobile space.

Asus has a history of attempting unusual routes to enter the U.S. smartphone market – it attempted a partnership with Garmin previously for smartphones with powerful built-in navigation elements, but the rise of sophisticated navigation apps, including the completely free Google Maps ending up causing that arrangement to stall.

Could a hybrid tablet/smartphone tablet be the key to lighting the fire under Asus’ progress in the west? I’m inclined to say no, and I’m especially skeptical that such a device based on Windows 8 will be any kind of breakaway hit with consumers. Essentially, it’s like taking a niche product with the Padfone and putting it into an even smaller box thanks to the use of Windows Phone 8, which itself has yet to really prove demand. Still, for a company clearly desperate to make the leap from traditional to mobile computing, I’m sure any plan looks pretty good right about now.

Posts Tagged ‘Create’

Swiss scientists create catbot: a robot that runs like a cat (video)

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Tactus And Synaptics Create A Reference Tablet For OEMs With An Amazing, Disappearing Keyboard

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Dances with atoms: IBM researchers create a short film using only microscopic particles

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Technique to create transparent brains could transform neuroscience

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Moniker Looks To Crowdfunding To Create A Custom Guitar Business

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Moniker Looks To Crowdfunding To Create A Custom Guitar Business

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Moniker Looks To Crowdfunding To Create A Custom Guitar Business

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How to create a Fixed Size AABB for a robot as the Sphere Bounding Volume?

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NYU researchers create ‘living crystals’ to learn why birds flock together

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Asus Reportedly In Talks With Microsoft To Create Windows 8-Based Padfone Smartphone-Tablet Hybrid

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